If you’re going to put up a load of Internet wonks in your Congressional Palace, you might as well get something out of it.
An interesting letter [pdf] has appeared from the Moroccan minister for economic and general affairs addressed to ICANN head Paul Twomey asking ICANN to hurry along the redelegation of its .ma top-level domain to the Moroccan government in the form of its telecommunications agency, ANRT.
Presumably, since it is asking, the currently contact for .ma, a Mr Amine Mounir Alaoui from the Ecole Mohammadia d’Ingenieurs – a technical college in the capital Rabat – is not overwhelmed with the idea (I’ve emailed him to ask).
This is a classic situation in Africa at the moment – governments trying to pull TLDs off the original Jon Postel designees.
The Moroccan government clearly figured this was a good time to make a request. And it needn’t worry because, if you hadn’t noticed, a clever piece of interaction between the US government and ICANN last year now means that governments can demand control of their own top-level domains, in a complete flip to ICANN’s previously firm belief that it could only change delegation after all sides had reached agreement.
Maybe it will be ICANN’s refusal to do this that will be behind the Moroccan internet community’s almost certain fury with ICANN by the time the meeting is over.
Why certain fury?
- December 2005 – Vancouver meeting. March 2006 – Canada internet community sends letter refusing to co-operate any further with ICANN until makes its processes more transparent.
- March 2006 – Wellington meeting. June 2006 – Internet NZ go public (and on TV) damning ICANN for scrapping .xxx at the last minute due to US government pressure.
- June 2006 – Marrakech meeting. December 2006 – Moroccan internet community sends letter accusing ICANN of handing .ma over to government body?
Only time will tell.